When you are a child you desire to be awesome- to have exceptional abilities that make you shine to those around you. Growing up is about realizing that no one wants to watch you shine. It’s annoying. What people want is for you to add value to their lives. What society wants is for you to add value to society.
Enter Jupiter. In traditional astrology, he is the bringer of wisdom, luck & riches. In modern astrology, he is frequently associated with weight gain, overspending & all forms of excess.
If I had to sum up Jupiter in one word, I would call him Idealism. He is the first planet who causes us to look beyond our personal goals to see how we can benefit the world around us. And as we become *for others* others become for us. They now have a motivation to help us. Society now has a motivation to reward us. People can open doors for us which we could never have opened for ourselves. This is luck. People invest in us and introduce us to new ideas & ways of seeing things. And so our world begins to expand.
But will our waistline expand as well? Possibly yes, but not because Jupiter is a pleasure seeking lush. In my opinion, every planet is a correcting force to the planet preceeding it. The Sun is hot and the Moon cools it. The moon is mushy but mercury is crisp. Mercury is too mental so Venus opens the heart. Venus is weak so Mars is strong-willed. Mars is shielded and independent, focusing on enemies and threats. So Jupiter opens up, to see the good in the world and also the good that COULD be in the world. You will never hear Jupiter say that humans suck. He fucking LOVES humanity.
But this new openness and love for the world naturally leads to a softening of personal boundaries and willpower. Jupiter will eat more, drink more and buy more just because he is more in touch with the goodness around him and lacks the will to resist. His personal bank account is not the most important thing to Jupiter anyway. He is externally focused. Just as the moon focuses on children and Venus focuses on her boyfriend, Jupiter focuses on society, seeing it through a doting golden glaze. He is the true believer in humanity’s potential and this excites him more than personal glory or owning buns of steel. His mind and emotions are mixed up and swirled with the world around him. If this goes too far of course, his generous optimistic spirit can be his undoing, which is why he is followed by the correcting force of hard & crusty Saturn.
And I believe Jupiter’s altruism is responsible for the high spirits he is known for. Our personal cares often dissolve when we develop an outer focus and fall in love with something beyond our self. Jupiter is about falling in love with our human tribe or even humanity. The world becomes brighter, more interesting, filled with meaning and purpose. Suddenly we matter because there are always things we can do to benefit and romance our new love interest. This does not necessarily mean we will be volunteer at a soup kitchen however. Depending on the sign and placement of Jupiter, this altruism can take many forms. Maybe we are Batman and do the dark works no one else has the stomach for. Maybe we are a clown working at a gas station, bringing a laugh to all the customers. We could be a writer, a hater, a bragger or a dancer. It isn’t the actions themselves which are Jupiterian but the motivation behind them. Jupiter’s motivation is to give to humanity. Idealism.
My Jupiter is in Aries for example, so at times when I am overtaken by altruism I become more fiery & belligerent than my normal personality. Almost as though our idealistic self is a genie kept in a bottle, a separate spirit who can possess us and provoke us into action our regular self would not take. My idealistic self tries to place myself in the line of fire in the hopes of taking a few bullets for humanity. Perhaps since I am cowardly by nature, being brave seems like the most idealistic thing I can do. I can only be brave though when this spirit overtakes me. A spirit of gratitude and awe for everyone and everything that has gone before. We all have this spirit and you can see its presence marbled throughout history when over and over again people devote and sometimes sacrifice themselves to transform the world for the better. It’s beautiful.
And in you this spirit, this altruism, may take any form. You may become maternal and start baking everyone muffins. Maybe you give hand jobs while expecting nothing in return. Lock yourself in your tool shed until you invent a better pencil. Or perhaps just lie on your sofa and dream new dreams that will one day come true for all of us.
